It's just as possible that the Hamburg leg, if there is no elimination, is an NEL or a TBC.

First, they've had a TBC in TAR 9 where teams went from Argentina to Russia on the first half, then from Russia to Germany on the second. It could be the same there here...also. (Argentina to Germany; Germany to France.) I'm not saying this is or isn;t, I am saying the logical possibilities work that way.

Second, while Phil said there would be 12 legs, he didn't say 12 episodes, and there is some wiggle room left in May to allow a May 16 finale as there's been for a May 9th finale.

From what I remember when the picture originally came out I don't think anyone was ever able to get the exif data off of it maybe because we never had the original photo only the copy on photobucket or something but I by no means the expert on any of this.

Also there is a lady who posts on the BB board I post on and she had a good friend who was in Puerto Vallarta for a week at that same time, they never saw Jeff and Jordan but they did say that although there was little celebrations through out the week the only big parade/celebration occurred on the 12th, it was on that street (we found screen shots on google maps of the exact corner they were standing on using the restaurant sign and another store sign in the background) and they blocked traffic for the parade...the 12th was also the only day traffic was blocked and people were allowed to just stand on the side of the road. I guess it was for some celebration for Our Lady of Guadelupe or something similar in name.

Thanks, heyhay. I tried looking for the exif data in a couple of photo editing programs and you're right. The information as to when it was taken, the camera used, the camera settings, etc. are not there. Apparently it was stripped off the photo before it was uploaded to photobucket. Unless someone else remembers something (or searches our threads more thoroughly than I did), I'd say your information about the parade on the 12th is the best estimate we have. In that case, Jeff and Jordan could be eliminated after Joe and Heidi.

In episode 3, Mike and Louie received a one hour penalty for following a taxi cab driver to the Horse sense or Money sense Detour. They arrived at the mat in 7th place just ahead of Brent and Caite, but had to wait there for their penalty to run its course.

This is particularly nice confirmation of what many of us have been hoping for...it is now against the rules to hire a taxi to follow, apparently.

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In episode 3, Mike and Louie received a one hour penalty for following a taxi cab driver to the Horse sense or Money sense Detour. They arrived at the mat in 7th place just ahead of Brent and Caite, but had to wait there for their penalty to run its course.

This is particularly nice confirmation of what many of us have been hoping for...it is now against the rules to hire a taxi to follow, apparently.

There are taxi drivers out in the countryside?Nice to see the race is emphasizing navigation strongly.

An hour seems a tad severe; did they use the cab twice, once to the Detour and once to the pitstop?Anyway, it's well edited. You can't see the cab, Phil never uses the ordinal ("You're the seventh team to arrive, however..."), and the only tipoff might be when they step up to the mat they come in slightly from the side instead of straight down the path.

No, maybe a net difference in credit of penalties that amount to one minute.

We're never told about this stuff unless it makes a difference in what we see in the episode; and with not show all departure times starting to become a habit, there's even more wiggle room as to what the viewer is told than formerly.

I'm going to respectfully disagree with Apskip's choice of flights on the Episode Thread. I think he's switched up the arrival times of the three flights, and he can't find the 11.10am Austral Airlines flight out of Bariloche. Looking at a different date perhaps?

The first matter of business is to figure out which day the teams left Bariloche. We know the teams checked in the previous leg on the evening of the 2nd, and we have half the pack travelling through Sao Paulo, arriving at 3.40pm in Frankfurt.

The usual scheduled flight from Sao Paulo to Frankfurt leaves at 11.15pm and arrives at 2.00pm, but it is only on the flight departing on the 4th that the flight was delayed, arriving instead at 3.22pm on the 5th. We can therefore confirm that the Hamburg leg took place on the evening of the 5th, and that teams were released from the Bariloche Pit Stop on the evening of the 3rd, after a ~30h Pit Stop.

We had the Sao Paulo and direct flights, but missed out on the Paris flight as it was scheduled to leave earlier and arrive later than the Sao Paulo connection. Here are the flights that the teams took:

Had the final flight not been delayed, the main pack would have arrived in Frankfurt the earliest, followed 35min later by the Jet/Cord/Michael/Louie flight and an hour later by the Carol/Brandy/Daniel/Jordan flight. Lots of airport drama we missed out on.

The German train website no longer shows timetables for December 2009, having changed their schedule on 13 Dec, but they share the same booking system as the Austrian rail service, which still hosts the old timetables on their website! Here are the trains the teams took:

The lead pair had a good one hour over the trailing teams arriving at Hamburg. Note that had the Sao Paulo flight not been delayed, they would have made it onto a direct train running 1442-1834, arriving a full hour ahead of Jet/Cord/Michael/Louie and two hours ahead of Carol/Brandy/Daniel/Jordan.

Timetable updated with the Reims leg. No major changes.

Leg

Phil

Teams

Comments

Valparaiso

29 Nov

29 Nov

First leg

Puerto Varas

30 Nov

1 Dec

-

Bariloche

2 Dec

2 Dec

Short leg

Hamburg

4 Dec

5 Dec

Long leg

Verdun

6 Dec

7 Dec

Unconfirmed

Reims

8 Dec

8 Dec

Short leg

Seychelles

10 Dec

11 Dec

Long leg

Penang

13 Dec

14 Dec

Long leg

Singapore

15 Dec

16 Dec

-

Shanghai I

17 Dec

18 Dec

-

Shanghai II

19 Dec

19 Dec

Short leg

San Francisco

20 Dec

20 Dec

Final leg

« Last Edit: March 29, 2010, 11:24:59 PM by Neobie »

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This table, which sets up the schedule for both the crew and the teams, allows us to predict the existence of extra legs (for example, the second leg in Shanghai this season), or the location of these legs (for example, that an extra leg in TAR 15 - Cai Be - was geographically close to Ho Chi Minh City).

The dates in the table represent the day on which most tasks take place. For Phil, this is the day he films his stand-ups. For the teams, this is the day they do the bulk of their racing. For example, if teams arrive in Puerto Varas on the night of the 29th but the majority of the challenges take place on the 30th, the table will indicate the 30th.

The schedule of the recent races (I started paying attention in TAR 14) follows a general pattern. Phil arrives one day before the teams, spends the next day checking in the teams, and sets up the next leg on the third day while teams are held back by extended Pit Stops, by transportation schedules or by hours of operation. An example in table form:

Leg

Phil

Teams

Comments

Leg 4

1 Jan

2 Jan

-

Leg 5

3 Jan

4 Jan

-

Leg 6

5 Jan

6 Jan

-

There are several notable exceptions. The first type is what I call short legs. This is when Phil films his stand-ups on the same day the racers are doing the challenges.TAR 14: Stechelberg to Salzburg, Phuket to Bangkok, Beijing to BeijingTAR 15: Cai Be to Ho Chi Minh City, Dubai to Dubai, Prague to Prague

I don't dare to present a rationale, but these one thing these legs have in common is the short travel distance. And as TheSchnauzers says, they are often temporally short as well, since flights are often not involved. In TAR 16, this comes in the form of Puerto Varas to Bariloche, Hamburg to France or France to France, and Shanghai to Shanghai. In fact, the legs on which Phil films his stand-ups the same day as the teams are racing are always the shortest legs, distance-wise, in their respective seasons. Short legs, at least since TAR 14, have never been back to back. In table form:

Leg

Phil

Teams

Comments

Leg 7

7 Jan

7 Jan

Short leg

Leg 8

8 Jan

9 Jan

-

The second group of exceptions, on contrast, involves long travel legs. Sometimes Phil spends so much time travelling to the next destination he doesn't have enough daylight to work with, and so the entire schedule is pushed back. These legs often involve long multi-leg flights.TAR 14: Bran to Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk to JaipurTAR 15: None, since they stuck to major cities with good airport hubsTAR 16: Bariloche to Hamburg, France to Seychelles, Seychelles to Penang

Leg

Phil

Teams

Comments

Leg 9

10 Jan

11 Jan

-

Leg 10

13 Jan

14 Jan

Long leg

Here, Phil flies to his destination on the 12th, while teams travel on the 13th.

The third type of exception involves the premiere and finale legs. Premieres, if flight schedules allow, often involve an overnight rest on the first day, giving Phil some wiggle room to film his stand-ups. For example, the TAR 14 premiere had teams travel to Locarno for an overnight while Phil heads directly to Interlaken for his narration, and the TAR 15 premiere had teams stay over in the magical Green Room, giving Phil some time for filming in Tokyo. This doesn't always apply, especially if the first leg takes place in South America. TAR 9 and TAR 16, in particular, had flight schedules with morning arrivals, meaning Phil has had to hustle to get his filming done. Finales are often single-day affairs. I suppose Phil has all the times to film his stand-ups after wrapping up the race formalities.

Leg

Phil

Teams

Comments

Leg 11

15 Jan

16 Jan

-

Leg 12

17 Jan

17 Jan

Final leg

After all that... Piecing together the dates Phil and teams are sighted along the racecourse allows us to fill in the table, allowing us to figure out where the gaps are and how long production has available for legs. Confusing, but it's worked pretty well so far!

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This recent filming pattern seems to be something they've worked out over the years by trial and error, because TPTB have been able to compress filming down to 21-22 days, even for 12 legs; when in earlier seasons that would often involve an additional week to get 12 legs in the can. But that gap for the Bariloche-Hamburg leg is quite unusual, even for early season because of the limited flight options. (Go back and look at TAR 5 Baruloche departure episode; teams had to get to Buenos Aires that season as well, and it took a series of buses plus flights to get all the teams out of the country.

That leg where we were in France, we had no sleep in twenty-four hours. Actually, that baguette in France was the first thing that we had to eat and I actually didn't drink anything for twelve hours. So you're sleep deprived, you're hungry, you're water deprived, and you're just exhausted.

THE DEADBOLT: Was there anything from your time on the race you wish was aired, something that we didn't see?

JOE: The Hamburg leg was a crucial leg where the cops [Louie and Michael] were actually at the end of the pack and their flight, low and behold, got them there earlier even though we were supposed to arrive an hour ahead. That was a turning point. Those are the chances that happen on the race.

so when we were in the long mandatory rest period after the Argentinean leg at that sheep ranch, we all spent a good 30 hours together And that was the only time we were not in a sequester mode where we could actually have meals together and have some conversations with the other teams. And yeah, we were all in very good spirits and we were trying to make the best of the situation, camping in Argentina and not having showers and things like that. It was a good time.

Reality TV World: So what happened during that ticket line incident, where you were holding spots in line?

Joe Wang: Oh yeah, no, no. That was not "holding a spot," if you want to call it that. We were at the bus station and Brandy and Carol went with us. And then they ended up going to another station to make sure we had the best bus route. So for us we had to stick together as a team, and so I was in the front of the line and then Brandy and Carol ended up coming back and said "This is the best bus route."

So because they were researching information for us, and we'd agreed prior to getting into line, that's what ended up happening. So the cops were not understanding the situation. We weren't holding any spots, they were already in line with us but they had to go and research for us too.

...

Quote

Joe Wang: We were trying our very best. I mean we were there for close to six hours and then it got dark and the weather changed dramatically, it started to rain. So I was giving Heidi a lot of shelter, her whole body was shivering. And if you remember, when we left we didn't have anything to eat or drink since 8:30AM. That was close to almost 12 hours.

Specially like getting the confirmation that ESM is no more.... I mean I hate that for the racers, hate that production has decided that keeping them apart breeds more drama, but still glad to see that teams still find ways to bond at airports and all.

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